The Symbiotic Relationship Between Language and Culture
In my opinion, the original purpose of language is to create a tool for more efficient method of communication, but it also shares common area with other perspectives of human being, such as history or culture. Culture is corporate beliefs and values of people in a certain amount of area. In some extent, I think language and culture are inseparable because an individual with both linguistic and cultural background would be influenced by both two aspects naturally. However, from the perspective of the content, one subject can be described by various languages, which means subjects that different languages depict are based on the fact that we all share the same reality.
It sounds quite ironic, but it is merely for the different ways we see the relationship between language and culture. What is certain about is that language is always beyond itself. When I started to learn English, our teachers were not only simply teaching us how to interpret each word but also refer to the background of the vocabulary or the reason people usually use this phrase. The grammar differences and the various vocabulary choices even people want to express the same content are due to the diverse train of thoughts of people with different cultural backgrounds. Language is used to record culture. There are words cannot be translate from one language to another one or lose its part of the meaning when doing so. Differences in culture like how people value things would lead to different language evolution and as time pass by, the difference would grow from words to phrasing and then the sentence structure or grammar rules. Recording culture by language makes people learn and remember their culture unintentionally. As the younger generation learn to use its language, the information they gain is much more than a communication method. Language is a great tool to develop the long-term cultural heritage generation to generation.
Sometimes the way we think about things would impact our the way we speak out and sometimes the way we say something impact the way we behave as well. An interesting example is that I found when I do presentations in Chinese, mostly I would get panic and don’t know what to do in front of the class (even if I am well-prepared). On the contrary, if I do it in English, I would be more confident in the first place and the whole presentation would go along smoothly. This is why I believe the way language and culture interact with each other is not unidirectional. Their relationship is surely symbiotic.
